Items tagged with ethereum
As we reported over the weekend, Ethereum has seen a monumental rise in value during the opening months of 2021. Ethereum kicked off the new year valued at $730 and this morning surpassed the $3,000 mark to hit $3,148 (as of this writing). To put this performance in perspective, just a week ago, Ethereum was sitting at $2,500. However, the cryptocurrency likely won't stop here as deVere Group CEO Nigel Green predicts that we could see another massive surge. According to Green, Ethereum could pass $5,000 within the next week. While that comment may have seemed like an outlandish prediction just a few months ago, the current cryptocurrency boom takes a bit of the edge off the skepticism. "Ether...
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Gamers looking to purchase a current-generation graphics card from NVIDIA or AMD at MSRP have found the task damn near impossible. There are several reasons for this phenomenon, including the immense performance that these graphics cards provide in games; the resulting demand from gamers eager to get their hands on one; and the meteoric rise in the value of cryptocurrencies. One cryptocurrency that has been on an incredible run during 2021 is Ethereum, which is at an all-time high. Ethereum is currently sitting at just over $2,900 in value, a nearly 4x increase since the start of 2021. Bitcoin sharply increased its value over the past four months as well. The dominant cryptocurrency entered 2021...
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In recent days, we've heard increasing rumors that NVIDIA will release a new revision GeForce RTX 30 Series "GAxx2" GPUs that feature an enhanced cryptocurrency mining limiter. Today with the release of the GeForce 466.24 driver, NVIDIA confirmed those rumors surrounding a mid-May launch. If you look at the release notes for the GeForce 466.24 driver, you'll find the following passage: "This driver updates the hash limiter for the GeForce RTX 3060 12GB and is required for product shipped starting mid-May." The folks at VideoCardz dug deeper into the new driver and discovered that the latest revision of the GeForce RTX 3060, which will carry the GA106-302 GPU, has a unique Device ID. While the...
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The consensus on the internet seems to be that the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti and GeForce RTX 3070 Ti will be arriving relatively shortly on the consumer market. However, these new cards won't just bring increased gaming performance compared to the GeForce RTX 3080 and GeForce RTX 3070, respectively; they will also deliver at least two new features. This new round of alleged GAxx2 GPUs will have a revised version of the cryptocurrency mining limiter (which halved Ethereum hash rates) in place, as we've discussed on several occasions. NVIDIA's first-generation crypto limiter introduced with the GeForce RTX 3060 is easily bypassed. Ethereum miners first fooled the limiter using a beta driver provided...
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Ethereum mining seems to be all the rage these days, and companies like NVIDIA are looking to cash in on the crypto mining gold rush. In February, NVIDIA announced its Crypto Mining Processor (CMP) HX family of dedicated Ethereum cards, with hash rates ranging from 26 MH/s for the CMP 30HX up to 80 MH/s for the CMP 90HX. According to NVIDIA, in the middle lays the CMP 40HX, which has a stated hash rate of 36 MH/s. However, the performance of an alleged prototype ASUS CMP 40HX card has been revealed, and it is shaping up to be quite impressive. VideoCardz was sent an image of a rig featuring not one but eight ASUS CMP 40HX cards. And instead of puttering along at the official 36 MH/s hash rate,...
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It is currently a horrible time for enthusiasts looking to build a new gaming rig or upgrade an existing one. Demand far outweighs supply for current- and even previous-generation graphics cards like the GeForce RTX 3080 and the Radeon RX 5700 XT, respectively. We can blame this shortage partially on cryptocurrency miners, who are buying up scores of these GPUs to mine for Ethereum. However, a new application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) is being released to the market that would forgo the need to secure massive amounts of consumer-level GPUs to belt out epic hash rates. Enter the Antminer E9, which has a claimed hash rate of 3 GH/s. For those keeping score, 3 GH/s equals roughly 32 GeForce...
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It looks as though NVIDIA will take another stab at a cryptocurrency mining limiter for its GeForce RTX 3060 after its current solution was defeated via multiple methods. The current GeForce RTX 3060 features the GA106-300 GPU, but a report alleges that a newer revision, GA106-302, is on the way to reenable the limiter. This information reportedly comes from a Taiwanese graphics card manufacturer, which says that NVIDIA has already discontinued the GA106-300. NVIDIA's switch to the GA106-302 thwarts miners on two fronts. First of all, the 470.05 beta driver currently used by Ethereum miners is incompatible with the new GPU revision, which shuts down that popular workaround. HKEPC states that...
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We got our first look at Gigabyte's first NVIDIA CMP HX card back in early March when a single photo leaked. Today, Gigabyte is ready to get official with the cryptocurrency mining card, designated as the NVIDIA CMP 30HX D6 6G (GV-N30HXD6-6G). As we had already surmised, the CMP 30HX D6 6G is based on NVIDIA's Turing TU116-100 GPU. The GPU features 1408 CUDA cores, a boost clock of 1785MHz, and 6GB of 14 Gbps GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit memory bus. There are no video outputs on the card, and it features a WindForce 2X cooling system with counterrotating 90mm fan blades. There's also a composite copper heat pipe to keep the GPU [relatively] cool. Not surprisingly, given the stresses that these cards...
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It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that cryptocurrencies are soaring to new highs. The valuation increases have also brought in a wealth of individuals and companies looking to cash in by mining for cryptocurrencies like Ethereum with GPUs that gamers would have otherwise bought. The huge cryptocurrency run culminated today with a cumulative valuation topping $2 trillion. Not surprisingly, Bitcoin and Ethereum make up the bulk of that $2 trillion figure, with the former hitting a 24-hour high of $58,243 with a total market cap of $1.10 trillion. Ethereum, on the other hand, had a 24-hour high of $2,118 with a market cap of $244.38 billion. Rounding out the top five cryptocurrencies...
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Cryptocurrency is slowly but surely growing in popularity with a broader global audience. Now that Elon Musk has begun to accept Bitcoin for Tesla purchases, that trend is only going to continue. As such, PayPal is jumping on the bandwagon of accepting crypto as a payment method for anything. Perhaps people will finally convert and have a use for all that Dogecoin they bought this year. Announced today, PayPal’s “Checkout With Crypto” feature will allow users to use their cryptocurrency at millions of businesses that support PayPal payments in the coming months. This builds on PayPal customers’ ability to buy, sell, and hold cryptocurrency with their PayPal wallets, allowing...
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We've been hearing a lot about NVIDIA's looming GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, but the information has mainly been sourced from rumors. However, today we're getting some more concrete evidence of the existence of NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3080 Ti courtesy of the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC). The EEC is a frequent leaker of unreleased computing hardware, and this time around, the organization has provided an early look at no less than 12 GeForce RTX 3080 Ti SKUs from Gigabyte. The EEC filing only gives us the product codes for each graphics cards, but if we parse that info with Gigabyte's existing graphics cards, here's what the lineup will look like: GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Aorus Xtreme Waterforce WB (GV-N308TAORUSX...
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Over the weekend, we heard a report that NVIDIA could repurpose its flagship Ampere A100 GPU for mining purposes. According to the rumor, the new GPU would sit atop the CMP HX family of dedicated mining GPUs. At the time, we had some serious concerns about the possibility of an A100-based CMP HX card, mainly with its price. The PCIe version of the A100 is pushing $11,000, which puts it far out of reach for miners, even if it were to offer unmatched Ethereum mining performance. However, today's report sheds some additional light on the alleged mining GPU, including its performance. NVIDIA Ampere A100 PCIe Card Hardware leaker I_Leak_VN alleges that this new A100-based card will...
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There's a crazy rumor floating around the Twittersphere concerning NVIDIA's dedicated cryptocurrency mining GPU family. As you recall, NVIDIA announced the four-SKU CMP HX family of mining GPUs back in February, reportedly based on a mix of Turing and Ampere GPUs. The highest performing family member is the CMP 90HX, allegedly based on the GeForce RTX 3080 while delivering an Ethereum hash rate of 86 MH/s. According to hardware leaker kopite7kimi, NVIDIA is looking to release a CMP HX card based on the bonkers Ampere A100 GPU. The A100 sits at the top of NVIDIA's Ampere GPU stack and is primarily designed for deep learning operations. The A100 is a bandwidth monster thanks...
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Earlier this week, we learned that NVIDIA's cryptocurrency mining limiter on the GeForce RTX 3060 was easily bypassed using the 470.05 beta driver. The limiter can slash Ethereum mining performance by 50 percent or more, which was supposed to reduce the graphics card's appeal to miners. While the beta driver seems to be perfectly fine for use in a single-GPU system, it doesn't kill the limiter if the GeForce RTX 3060 is used in a multi-GPU mining rig. Hardwareluxx discovered that the ETH limiter was still active with the 470.05 beta driver if a GeForce RTX 3060 is used as a secondary adapter, with a GeForce RTX 2080 Ti acting as the primary. In this case, the ETH hash...
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Leading up to the launch of the GeForce RTX 3060, NVIDIA made it clear that the GeForce RTX 3060 would have limitations in place to make it unpalatable to cryptocurrency miners. GeForce and Radeon GPUs are popular with Ethereum miners, which has exacerbated the GPU shortage plaguing the industry. NVIDIA's solution was to implement a combination of hardware, BIOS, and driver modifications to slash the ETH hash rate of the GeForce RTX 3060 in half. However, as we found out yesterday, this limiter was effectively disabled without much work on the user's part. A GeForce RTX 3060 owner only needs to install the 470.05 beta driver, which automatically removes the hash rate limiter. ...
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Last week we learned that NVIDIA's Ethereum crypto mining limiter might have possibly been broken. However, we quickly discovered that a GeForce RTX 3060 using the Octopus algorithm with the Conflux alt-coin was incorrectly cited as mining for ETH. Now, there is more evidence that the inevitable has finally happened. The folks over at PC Watch claim to have cut through NVIDIA's ETH restrictions, and it is simple to achieve. According to the report [via Google Translate], "The specific method is not introduced here, but it does not require modification of the driver or BIOS, and anyone can easily do it with a little effort." Given that there doesn't appear to...
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When it comes to Ethereum mining, NVIDIA has been getting a bulk of the attention in recent weeks for all the wrong reasons. Its newly released GeForce RTX 3060 has a cryptocurrency mining limiter enabled (crippling performance by up to 50 percent) in hardware/BIOS/drivers, and it's rumored that future GeForce RTX cards will have a similar limitation. But NVIDIA GPUs aren't the only ones capable of mining for cryptocurrency. AMD's previous-generation RDNA cards were well suited for Ethereum mining, however, its current-generation RDNA 2-based cards are not nearly as efficient. The alleged Ethereum mining hash rate for the upcoming Radeon RX 6700 XT has been revealed. Although these...
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Before the GeForce RTX 3060 officially launched, NVIDIA made the somewhat surprising announcement that the GPU would have a built-in hash rate limiter when mining for cryptocurrency. According to NVIDIA, this was done to limit the appeal of the GeForce RTX 3060 to crypto miners and leave more supply for the intended audience: gamers. NVIDIA said that it implemented the hash rate limiter through a combination of BIOS, driver, and hardware modifications, which would "detect specific attributes of the Ethereum cryptocurrency mining algorithm" and cut performance by up to 50 percent. In the real world, CryptoLeo witnessed a roughly 38 percent reduction in Ethereum mining performance with...
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Back in mid-February, NVIDIA announced its Crypto Mining Processor (CMP) HX family. Now it looks as though AMD may be countering with some headless Radeon GPU action of its own. The news comes to us from the new AMDGPU kernel patch driver notes for Linux 5.12. The pertinent piece of information for us today is the appearance of a new NV12 (Navi 12) SKU. According to the report, this would be a new headless graphics card based on first-generation Navi architecture (RDNA). The card would lack support for Video Core Next (VCN) which further adds to the rumors that this could be AMD's answer to CMP HX. NVIDIA previously stated that its CMP HX cards feature GPUs that didn't pass the grade...
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Blockchain technology is beginning to take off, as we saw with the 10-second video that sold for $6.6 million at auction. Simultaneously, trading cards have also taken off in certain markets, but it can be difficult to find cards and packs. Combining both ideas, Ubisoft has partnered with the Belgian Pro League to develop the One Shot League, a blockchain-based fantasy football game. One Shot League will be a free-to-play game “in which players form a 5-player team from a previously selected deck of cards of Jupiler Pro League football players.” Each match day, a new team is selected, hence the “One Shot” name. Besides just playing the football games (soccer in the US),...
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Earlier this month, NVIDIA announced its CMP HX family of Crypto Mining Processors, which are intended for professional miners looking to make some big bucks. This week, we found out that the entry-level CMP 30HX and 40HX feature the Turing TU116 and TU106 GPUs, respectively. Today, VideoCardz revealed that the next step up in the family -- the CMP 50HX -- is also based on Turing, specifically the TU102. The CMP 50HX is thus closely related to the previous generation flagship GeForce RTX 2080 Ti. GeForce RTX 3080 But more interesting is the fact that the top-of-the-line CMP 90HX features the GA102, which means that it's most closely aligned with the current...
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One week ago, NVIDIA announced a dedicated lineup of mining GPUs called the Crypto Mining Processor (CMP HX) Series. The company said that the "headless" cards are targeted at the "professional mining" market and that "they don't meet the specifications required of a GeForce GPU and, thus, don't impact the availability of GeForce GPUs to gamers." However, what was unknown was what GPU architecture NVIDIA decided to use for the CMP HX cards. Some code sleuthing through NVIDIA's most recent 461.72 drivers shed some light on at least two members of the CMP HX family. Based on the power consumption figures, the 6GB of memory, and 26 MH/s hash rate, it appears that the CMP 30HX is based on the...
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